


Pen to Paper

by charmandhex



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fic will cover SC through end of Balance, It's kind of more to do with her relationships with them, Leaning more towards another Lucretia character study than anything else because I'm predictable, Or mostly canon compliant I guess, The rest of the IPRE is mostly in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-04 00:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17294150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmandhex/pseuds/charmandhex
Summary: Lucretia has a gift for words in every universe. In this one, it's just a bit more magical in nature.





	1. The Story Begins

            Words have a kind of magic all their own. And of course Lucretia knows that; she’s a writer, has been arguably since before she could hold a pen to shape the words.  Her parents had been fond of recounting tales of their young child, face still chubby-cheeked with youth, earnestly recounting tales to toys and the cat, in a language half her own, half one understood by adults.

            And words and their magic have always been there for her, stories of worlds and wizards so far beyond her bedroom, comforting her and seeming to reach out to dry tears rolling down cheeks that had grown less chubby over the past few years. What need had she for those narrow-minded and cruel neighbor children, when books and the characters within understood her and beckoned her on into their adventures?

            Though, of course, as she grew older, Lucretia quickly decided this to be a foolish endeavor. These sorts of adventures were meant for the brave, the strong, the decisive leaders capable of taking on impossible challenges. And Lucretia might be young, but she knows herself, knows how she’s lived a sheltered sort of life, the outside world softened and muffled like the sound of rain on the roof while she’d read, hiding in a blanket fort. She would not term herself brave nor strong, cannot imagine one day being the sort of leader capable of saving anyone, let alone everyone.

            So she settles, well, not settles, because, really, she’s happy, more than happy to be doing it. So she settles on recording these tales from these larger than life characters and making their stories come to life, words dancing off the page and into the minds and hearts of their readers.

And, not to brag or to boast, she’s quite good at it, too.

            So good at it, in fact, that one day Lucretia finds herself in the office of a Gnomish captain at the world renowned Institute for Planar Research and Exploration. So good at it, in fact, that Lucretia finds herself in training with the best of the best for a mission that is, quite literally, out of this world. So good at it, in fact, that one day Lucretia finds herself on a starship powered solely by the bonds between people.

            It seems a rather empty triumph for a suddenly useless talent when their entire world is simply gone.

            Lucretia continues writing, in part at Davenport’s insistence that they proceed with their mission and explore this new world. And in part because she can’t _not_ , because pen and paper and the recording of stories are as much a part of Lucretia as white hair, bright eyes, and a shy smile are.

            And as time goes on, Lucretia starts to find that the magic of her words, both innate and imbued with each brush of pen tip against paper, grows, far beyond what she could have accomplished while hiding away from the world. As her bonds grow and as Lucretia steps further out into whatever new world she’s faced with, she breathes more life into her words. A few times, she could almost swear she sees things out of the corner of her eye, like a flower from a few cycles back, or hear phantom noises, Magnus’s laugh, though he’s off on a mission to reclaim the Light.

            It’s cycle 12, when she’s concentrating on describing some of the flora of this world. Her journals from cycle 8 that detail the bioluminescent fungi of that world are open next to her; she’d wanted to compare notes, see what similarities there were. And as she concentrates on a particular neon pink button-shaped mushroom, something gets her attention out of the corner of her eye. It’s almost like... almost like the words seem to float off the page of her journal from several cycles ago.

            So Lucretia pauses, rubs at tired eyes (for it is the sort of hour where they all ought to be asleep, though typical sleep patterns have long since been left behind with so much more), and sets back to work. Surely, her imagination.

            It is not. For as Lucretia continues to concentrate on her new words, the older ones continue to animate, come to life, the gentle ghosts of letters rising from the page. They waver, as Lucretia’s attention is diverted from her work to this strange magic, but in gaining her focus, the magic works much more quickly, spinning, twisting, condensing around themselves until the ghosts of words past instead form a spectral mushroom, glowing softly with a familiar light that’s far gentler on Lucretia’s eyes than the harsh lamp she’s been writing by.

            Huh. That’s neat.

            As time passes, she practices. At first it only begins when she’s concentrating on her words, describing new worlds. But then, again with practice, her control improves, and Lucretia can call forth images and even sounds from the pages of her journals. Later, even sensations and scents and tastes (a particularly memorable dish from the twins), though these are always less common.

            Her family is just as fascinated when she tells finally them. Barry hypothesizes, and the twins (Lup blushing faintly all the while) tease him for being a nerd. Davenport asks questions while Merle pokes at the shrub she’d called into being. Magnus looks between the plant and Lucretia, eyes growing wide. “Can you make a dog?” He asks, and Lucretia laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> So, this is kind of a departure for me and was mainly the product of me jotting some stuff down on my phone while I was on vacation. I'm still working on everything else, just working through some very fun writer's block. Hoping to get back on track with everything else in short order.
> 
> Bookmark, kudos, subscribe, comment, hit me up at [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com) \- whatever floats your boat!


	2. Chapter's End

            None of them can explain Lucretia’s mysterious ability, not fully, not when her talents lie in abjuration (not the sort of school you’d expect to find this sort of work in) and not when she’s never shown any sign of sorcery before. But it _is_ a remarkable talent, born of the love and work Lucretia had poured over the course of decades into her earliest skill.

            There are limits, of course. She can’t produce a walking, talking, thinking duplicate built of the written word alone, and certainly, producing an illusory dog that Magnus can chase around is more difficult than making a far less mobile mushroom. (Though she does do just that on more than one occasion).

            But Lucretia’s talent in both figuratively and literally giving life to words only grows over the years.

            She draws out the sun in a world of storms, music of past worlds in quiet spaces, and small moments of peace on inhospitable planes. Merle can see so much of what he’d missed those cycles before they’d swayed him into staying for longer than a few days, and when one or more of them is missing, well, it’s something. She’s even able to conjure things from their home world they’d all thought they’d long since forgotten.

            And on restless nights where the world is too still while the Hunger swiftly approaches and surrounds the plane, the sound of waves from the Beach World can soothe most of them to sleep.

            It’s toward the end of Cycle 47, when Magnus has introduced her to the source of what this world calls the Light of Creation, that a curious comparison is drawn.

            Magnus is looking between her, as she’s still attempting to spit out the taste of the water and shake it from her clothes, and his new friend. “You’re like Fisher!” He exclaims.

            “Fisher?” She raises an eyebrow. She might not get rid of this taste until she resets entirely. She makes a mental note to NOT record this.

            Magnus gestures to the jellyfish as though that should be obvious. “Yeah, Fisher.”

            “How am I like Fisher?” Lucretia asks, amused.

            “You know...” Magnus waves his hand in a way that communicates exactly nothing, even if you’ve known him for over 47 years now. “Fisher and their family take in what’s good in the world and project it out to everyone. You write down everything, and you can bring it to life again and show people. You’re like Fisher!”

            Lucretia laughs. The Hunger comes the next day. They bring Fisher with them.

            Lucretia quickly learns that she can’t call up images of the other voidfish or mimic their calls. Fisher becomes despondent for days the first and only time she does.

            During Cycle 65, she talks to her family. They don’t reply, and they aren’t real, but it’s as close to _not alone_ as she can make it.

            In the Empty World, she learns Shield of Faith from Merle. It’s both nothing like her magic with words and so much like it. Faith, bonds, and inner strength are the source of both. And both only grow more powerful over time. It’s strange, Lucretia thinks, that as certain as she’d been that she would never be like the heroes of stories she’d read decades ago, she’s more like them now than she ever thought possible. They’d been strong enough to guarantee a happy ending. Is she?

            Later, several cycles later, when they disagree, when they fight, about how best to finally win, and her family seems to ignore her carefully considered plans, Lucretia is more... frustrated than she’s been in years. Her shields static and falter as surges of the feeling hit her, shimmering unstably as doubt, for the first time in a long time, creeps in. Her words rise from the pages jerkily and lackluster, as something festers within the new cracks of the bonds Lucretia shares with her family. Something has broken between them, and it shows.

            When they arrive on their hundredth world and the Light lands practically in their arms, Lucretia continues writing and documenting. She notes the first few incidents, but surely, hopefully, things will turn out right in the end. But that same doubt that had crept in the first time the plan was discussed, planes ago, again takes root. And when the Relic Wars reach a boiling point, magic, madness, and mayhem exploding outward and sweeping over Faerun, nothing, not even Lucretia’s small family still floating distantly above, is left unscathed.

            And so Lucretia begins her redaction. The ghosts of worlds, loved, lost, left behind, rise up in bits and pieces as she writes, a sort of farewell, she thinks, as soon she’ll be the only one who remembers them at all. It’s a heavy weight to bear. But she will. She has to, to save them, to save them all.

            She feels no joy, no triumph as Fisher consumes her words. She feels abject horror as that same emotion crosses Magnus’s face, understanding in moments what his sister has done. A wooden duck drops from his hands as the light of recognition dies in his face, cast into sharp relief by Fisher’s glow.

            When it’s done and Lucretia’s family is scattered just as they had scattered the Light of Creation, she starts her work anew, tracking down the Relics.

            It’s hard to say what the problem is. Perhaps her ability had been more dependent on her bonds than she ever knew. Perhaps she’d sacrificed it when she’d hidden the most important story she’d ever written, never to be told. But the problem is there all the same.

            Lucretia cannot give life to words anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> Another round of editing done! It's astonishingly easier when it's not a 10k word chapter.
> 
> Kudos, comment, bookmark, subscribe, ask me about all the other stuff I should probably be working on at [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com).


	3. Turning the Page

            Lucretia’s search for the Relics is a lonely one. It seems fitting to her, in some strange way, that the only Relic she has any success finding and reclaiming is her own. They’re a matched set, both bulwarks, both never intended to cause harm, both shattered sevenths of something that was once so much greater. And so Lucretia goes on for a while, pursuing the other Relics, Bulwark Staff in hand.

            And then the flyer, with its picture of the Animus Bell and its neon lettering, arrives. So Lucretia goes. It’s not that she rushes in, heedless of the danger she willingly walks into. She plans and strategizes and finds the strongest magic user she can convince to go with her (for those others she would instead ask are long since gone). She has a century more experience than her appearance would seem to indicate. She’s strong and she’s skilled and she is going to make it through because she has to. So when Lucretia walks into Wonderland, she’s sure that she will walk out, victorious and in possession of the Animus Bell.

            She quickly realizes that it’s a trap, the promise of the Animus Bell luring prey to predator, the colorful, bright flyer a strange bloom belying how toxic the source is.

            Lucretia gives up much in Wonderland. Years, memories, vitality, magic. Not her ability to take her own words and bring them to life, so like the mannequins and smoke her unseen hosts manipulate. No, because as they remind her, you can’t surrender something you no longer possess.

            She doesn’t make it through, but she does make it out, because she has to. Because she is the only one who remembers, the only one who can finally end this, once and for all. Still, she doesn’t walk out so much as stumble, injured and weakened, to face the Felicity Wilds once more, with the Animus Bell no closer than when she walked in.

            She makes it out of the Felicity Wilds, just as she made it out of Wonderland, because she has to. She makes it back to Davenport and the Bulwark Staff and the Starblaster, rather closer to dead than she’d like for the final cycle, because she has to. But she makes it.

            Later, alone, Lucretia sits quietly, staring at her hands. Not writing, but clenched around the Bulwark Staff once more. The lines of age are both softer and yet more apparent under the calm light of day than they had been under the flashing neon lights as she’d pressed “Escape.” Lucretia is over 120 years old and yet, now in her 40s, this is the oldest her body has ever been. Lucretia stands slowly, noting the new pains and aches of her artificially aged body, and crosses to her desk. She sits behind it and begins to plan again.

            She’d been confident that she could do this alone. That had been a mistake. One she needs to rectify.

            So Lucretia builds the Bureau of Balance, and Maureen builds her a moon base. She gets help, Johann, Killian, Carey, Avi, Captain Bane, Magic Brian, and more.

            Meanwhile, just as Lucretia’s search had fallen to pieces, so do the new lives she’d artfully constructed for her family. Her heart breaks several times over as, each time, she is too late to help. For several aching moments, she considers bringing them home. But how can she go to them unsuccessful? How can she bring them back to nothing more than pain and suffering when, despite her best efforts and best-laid plans, that’s what she left them to?

            But her search continues to be a lonely, fruitless one. Even with safeguards in place, her employees, her friends, succumb to the thrall of the Relics, which only ever slip through her grasp as the Animus Bell did.

            She needs help. She needs her family. She can’t have them. Fisher has a child. She can have them.

            For the first time, in quite a long time, Lucretia feels the stirring of hope as she jots down notes about the egg that had appeared in Fisher’s tank. And out of the corner of her eye, she sees it.

            Faint and glowing, far more wispy and insubstantial than all but her earliest creations, is an egg, formed of her words.

            Apparently her gift has not deserted her altogether.

            It grows stronger as Lucretia waits for the egg to hatch. Fisher hums contentedly, and Lucretia feels dread even with the hope flooding through her. Of course, she’d already destroyed one family in her goal to prevent the destruction of so many more. But knowing that she’ll destroy another to bring back a fraction of her own is a heavy weight to bear.

            But bear it she does. Fisher screams. So does their child.

            Lucretia inoculates herself and creates a failsafe. She summons up three faces as the child consumes her journals detailing the century they’d managed to steal, year by year, and the one she’d stolen from them. The faces seem wrong somehow, lifeless and unfamiliar.

            It doesn’t matter. She’ll have the real thing soon, right?

            Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> Part 3 done!
> 
> Kudos, comment, subscribe, bookmark, hit me up at [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com) and I'll love you forever.


	4. Action Rising

            As different as Lucretia is from that day ten years ago, so is her family. Taako is even more guarded, more untrusting than the day she met him, and finally Lucretia can see what not having Lup, what erasing Taako’s foundation, did to him.  She spares a bitter moment to wonder what was left as her eyes jump unflinching to Davenport. The joy has faded from Merle’s eyes; he has chosen otherwise now. When it comes to his life here, the one she had built for him, she can see only… dissatisfaction. The look in Magnus’s eyes she can only describe as haunted, the same look he’d gotten when one of them was gone and he hadn’t been there to protect them. Only this time, the woman for whom he wears the band of gold on one finger can’t return to him after a year.

            Later, she has to force her hand not to shake as she notes these differences. She doesn’t quite dare bring these to life, can’t face the double effect of her own actions.

            And yet they remain themselves, joking (not quite so kind) and determined (survival of a different sort, really). Merle’s faith is shaken but there. Magnus’s shield sees as much use as his axe. And Taako carries both Lup’s Relic and her focus, though he recognizes neither. When he casts with the Umbra Staff, Lucretia feels as though she’s watching a ghost. Lup… where can she have gone, when the thing she’d left to hide is sooner found than Lup herself.

            The revelation that Barry is- well, not _alive_ , because Barry alive would be far less of a problem, but he is out there and he _remembers_. Lucretia watches Barry, red-robed and pure magic, rise from the pages of a journal and considers. He hasn’t… he hasn’t told them anything that would derail her plan, simply because he can’t, because they won’t hear it. He didn’t harm them, but he did kill Captain Bane. Though this was in defense of his family. His family, fractured and with pieces missing, unsteady ground beneath him.

_Is he stable?_ As the question crosses her mind, the small lich projected before her shudders and staticks, red lightning snapping off it in streaks. Lucretia doesn’t back up, knowing that memory can’t hurt her. At least, not in this way.

            It’s only after they reclaim Taako’s Relic, after they talk to Barry, again, that she again shows them her ability. Lucretia goes to her shelf, pulls down a particular blue-covered book. She flips open to the first page she wants.

            “This is the settlement of Armos. Was.” She starts as the words rise off the page, swirling and coalescing to a town. Her family leans in, watching in fascination “A seven year old girl found the Philosopher’s Stone and tuned the entire city to peppermint candy. Seven hundred and fourteen people were killed.” The town transforms to a sickeningly sweet pink not unlike the tourmaline that had covered Lucas’s lab.

            Taako looks ready to be sick already. Lucretia flips to another page. The words begin to float upward before she even speaks. A normal town appears, and its destruction follows. “Greenhold. A warlord used the Oculus to manifest a small black hole. Eleven hundred and fifty-two people.” The town is gone by the time she finishes speaking.

            A calm ocean rises off the next page, giving no indication what happened there. “This used to be the Archipelago of Moonshae. A storm brought on by the Gaia Sash drowned it in under three minutes. Two thousand five hundred and twelve.”

            She flips several pages and watches the light of recognition dawn in their eyes as circles of black glass appear. “Of course this is familiar. Eight cities destroyed by the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. Twelve thousand.”

            She turns several more pages. Scenes of war and battle and bloodshed appear. “And the wars for the Relics themselves? Nearly impossible to say.”

            Finally, she looks up. Unlike the first time she showed them this ability, there is no delighted surprise (though, ever persistent, Magnus will later ask for an illusory dog). Their faces are somewhere between impassive (after all, they don’t remember their own roles in these catastrophes) and disturbed (particularly by the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet).

            But they trust her. Or, they trust her enough, which is more than she deserves, she’ll admit. They trust her enough to let her plan move forward.

            She refuses to consider what will happen after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> Chapter 4 edited and done and my life has gone immediately back to crazy with my return to work hooray.
> 
> Kudos, comment, bookmark, subscribe, yell at me at [charmandhex]() but also don't actually yell I'll get sad. Or yell nice things.


	5. Story's End, Story's Beginning

            Lucretia doesn’t need to consider what will happen after. Because she knows what’s next.

            The time comes. Lucretia knows the signs; she’s been watching for them since the day those many, many eyes stared down at the Bulwark Staff, with three sevenths of the Light of Creation in it, clenched tight in her hands. As the eerie calm creeps over the world, as the winds still and the thrum of life quiets, Lucretia knows it’s time. They’ve prepared as much as they can. They’re strong, almost, _almost_ as strong as the three she once knew as well as her own heart.

            Still. Wonderland.

            In the end, she has to steel herself with the very memories she had never wanted to see again, the end of the world, one hundred times over. She calls to life the words unflinchingly recorded in the last few pages of each journal for each year and lets heartbreak surround her. Again and again, she watches the Hunger attack, a tidal wave of black opal sweeping implacably over the world, inhabitants screaming and running and trying to hide. And as the cycles go on, there are fewer and fewer glimpses of a bright silver ship, glowing with the Light aboard, escaping. Onto the next cycle.

            No more cycles now. One way or another, the story ends here.

            So she calls them into her office. Explains, mostly. Sends them off knowing full well what they’re walking into. Sacrifice. Pain. No healing.

            Well. Merle wouldn’t be able to do much now anyway. She breathes a silent apology to her friend, one that he doesn’t hear.

            And then they’re gone.

            Moments before the end of the world, the world that Lucretia carefully built out of the wreckage the seven had left behind shatters, and shatters several times over.

            Magnus is dead.

            Barry is not; he’s with Taako and Merle.

            Magnus isn’t dead.

            He remembers. They all do.

            She has the final piece. Taako has a look in his eyes she’s never seen there before. His voice is angry and yet empty. His hand is steady as he points his sister’s focus at her.

            This is the ending she’s earned though. But her story yet has a few more lines, and she keeps her shield raised. Taako’s evocation cannot match his sister’s, and Lucretia’s shields are themselves unmatched.

            They are interrupted by the Hunger. And then the Hunger is interrupted.

            The joy she felt when Magnus walked through the door, alive and whole, returns in full when Lup explodes from the Umbra Staff, neither alive nor whole, but joyfully, joyfully free and returned at last.

            And then Lucretia vanishes. She needs to complete her work, raise the shield to protect them all. Words dance up from the journal still in her pocket, a ghostly shield surrounding an equally ghostly plane. A war of attrition, to starve the Hunger, is their best choice, the only choice to survive.

            It’s neither the only choice, nor the best one.

            There is a third choice. Impossibly simple, should have been impossible to overlook. And yet they all had.

            As the Starblaster takes flight once more, Lucretia concentrates. Now is the time to give everything. They are going to win, and she is going to protect them all. And when she doesn’t make it out, well, that’s the best she deserves, isn’t it? The ending she’s earned?

            They make it to the plane of the Hunger, an impossible plane of darkness, discontent, dissatisfaction. Lucretia’s hands, so much older and so much younger than she herself, are as steady as Taako’s had been earlier, wrapped around the only true source of Light in hundreds upon thousands of planes.

            Her family stays.

            The Bulwark Staff, nearly fracturing into splinters trying to contain the Light of Creation (though the staff was made by Magnus, and it is as strong and sturdy, and it holds), shoots a beam of light upward. But not just light. Brilliant words pass before Lucretia’s eyes, all of them, all of her journals and their journey, powerful and stunning. And they begin to take shape, spinning and weaving together into a shield, the most powerful shield she’s ever made, powered by Lucretia’s faith in herself, in her family, in the plane and people they will not leave behind.

            And then Light. Light everywhere, Light surrounding and abounding, Light blazing its way through the longest of nights.

            Lucretia’s first realization is that she isn’t dead, and, if she’s being entirely honest, that one might be more surprising than coming face to face with Jeffandrew and being told she’s the most powerful person he’s ever met.

            And then they’ve won.

            And Lucretia isn’t gone; her story does not end along with the end of everything. The ending she’s given is not the one she’d thought she earned.

            So she works to rebuild the world. Big projects, rebuilding cities and towns, enough to fill books. And there comes a day when the number of these books surpasses the number she’d devoted to the Relic Wars. And also small things, comforting still fearful children with colorful butterflies and flowers of planes returned to their rightful places. And those children can go out and face a bright world and make it brighter still. And they do.

            Naturally, she continues her writing, because she can’t not. After all, there’s more story to write.

            So she writes, and she works, and against all odds, Lucretia finds happiness, too, in the story that did not end.

            And that’s a kind of magic, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all!
> 
> Well. That's that, isn't it? Kudos, comment, bookmark, subscribe to my various author shenanigans as a whole with that lovely subscribe button, and see what I'm getting up to next a [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com). After all, if it weren't obvious from this fic, I'm less about things ending entirely and more about them beginning again.


End file.
